Category: Dailies

The Ken Burns Cat Out Of The PBS Bag

PBS has officially announced details of Ken Burns’ update to his 1994 PBS “Baseball” documentary, including the (cough) interesting (ahem) line-up (cut to the second paragraph) of interviewees:

Ken Burns’ “The Tenth Inning,” the follow-up to his nine-part 1994 “Baseball” documentary, finally will air on PBS Sept. 28-29, the final weekend of the regular season for Major League Baseball.

Roger Angell, John Thorn, George Will, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Bob Costas return for “Tenth,” and are joined by new interviewees Keith Olbermann, Joe Torre, Pedro Martinez and Ichiro Suzuki.

If you have a long memory, you may recall that Ken and I did not see eye-to-eye on the original series, which was to me a great sadness because I had so enjoyed his “The Civil War” (I watch it at least annually, usually twice a year). I had no desire to make any public criticism of it but was kind of asked to by ESPN when USA Today came asking the network for one of it’s baseball historians to address the series.
Happily, that is a long time ago and Ken and I have since become good friends. He’s been a guest on tv with me several times and did me the honor of letting me see a rough cut of the “Tenth Inning” supplement. It’s exceptional, retains his distinctive style and pace despite the greater availability of video, it’s historically perfect, and as always with his series (Shelby Foote in “The Civil War,” the late Buck O’Neil in the original “Baseball,” and all of the principals in his epic of WWII, “The War”), it will make stars out of some of the interviewees. For my money, ESPN’s Howard Bryant might be the breakout guy of the new production. My MSNBC colleague Mike Barnicle is terrific too. The most fascinating thing for the fan: Pedro Martinez at his reflective best, candid and moving, and a few memorable clips from the first sit-down interview I’ve ever seen with Ichiro. It’s in Japanese, it’s worth it, and he’s thoughtful, proud, and funny.
Me? I’ll do but it was a bad hair day.

I Guess It Really IS His Mound

IMG_2335.jpg

COMCAST SPORTS NET via MLB NETWORK

You’ll remember that after the contretemps with Alex Rodriguez, Braden had said “If my grandmother ran across the mound, she’d hear the same thing he (Rodriguez) heard.” After escaping the group hug with his teammates, with whom did he celebrate the perfect game?
His grandmother, Peggy Lindsey. 
IMG_2336.jpg
COMCAST SPORTS NET via MLB NETWORK

Dallas Braden admits to having been a wild teenager, and he got wilder still after losing his mother – to skin cancer – when she was barely in her 40’s. “I came real close to taking it away from myself, then my grandmother stepped in and kind of slapped me back into shape and got me going,” he told Baseball America after he won his first big league game. “I told my grandma that someday she would watch me pitch in the majors.”
The loyalty goes both ways. Braden throws a perfect game – on Mother’s Day – on Breast Cancer Awareness Day – for Grandma. And Grandma promptly tells the media, per this tweet by A’s beat writer Susan Slusser, “Stick it, A-Rod!”

Lincecum Weather

Low 50s, swirling winds, and 90 minutes before the game and the hot dog wrappers and other debris is already dancing on the warning track here at CitiField. The bad news for the home team – Giants coach Tim Flannery advises that Tim Lincecum prefers this kind of day to all others. San Francisco is so into the Sunday lineup thing that Juan Uribe is batting cleanup and only three other every day guys are in there – Aaron Rowand, Nate Schierholtz, and Sandoval (and hes at first) so Lincecum will have to carry them. Against Oliver Perez that, of course, is entirely possible.

What? A Milton Bradley Controversy?

Several sources, including this Seattle radio station, are reporting – gasp! – that Milton Bradley left the Mariners mid-game last night after manager Don Wakamatsu tried to remind him that a manager runs a team and not an outfielder who keeps getting traded because he believes that the breeze he feels is actually the universe revolving around him.

So if you had May 4 on the over-under for Bradley’s meltdown, you win the pool.
There is one glimmer of encouragement – although it has echoes of previous false self-awareness alarms – a second report that this morning, Bradley asked Wakamatsu and GM Jack Zduriencik “can you help me?”
Peter Gammons now tweets a text from Bradley: “Any reports I said I’m packing up and leaving are 100% fabricated.”
You will recall that the longest Bradley has gone without one of these, as he’s played his way in and out of LA, Oakland, San Diego, Texas, and the Cubs, is a season-and-a-half. Incredibly, people keep getting fooled.

Back-patting

A month in, some predictions I made here that I’m very happy about:

 Joel Pineiro might have been the off-season’s most overrated signing… 


Pineiro: 2-3, 5.76 ERA.

…just for good measure, Cliff Lee is not only hurt – he has the most nagging and unpredictable of injuries for a baseball player, ‘something in the abdomen.’

First appearance coincides with first discussion of his next team. Yikes.

What’s the psychological saw about repeating the same unsuccessful action with confidence that this time it will succeed? The Brewers are confident Dave Bush, Doug Davis, and Manny Parra and/or Jeff Suppan constitute three-fifths of a pitching staff.

Bush, Davis and Suppan are 1-6. Parra hasn’t started – yet – but he’s 0-1.

Here’s a silly little question for ARIZONA about Edwin Jackson. If he’s good enough for you to have given up on Max Scherzer, why is he pitching for his third team in as many seasons? 

1-3, 8.07.

Manny Being Just Manny (No PEDs) is a just slightly better offensive force than, say, Mark DeRosa. The McCourt Divorce may be a lot more interesting than the 2010 Dodgers, and a lot less painful to watch.

Your 2010 Dodgers, 11-14.

Matt Capps is likelier to be fine in Washington than Octavio Dotel is in Pittsburgh (he can’t get lefties out!)

The above may be an ultimate no-contest before June 1. Neal Huntington’s statement about the Pirates’ closer situation is the reason most people usually say “without equivocation.” The question about Evan Meek’s ascent seems to be only when (ok, a little bit “how” – like “how do the Pirates explain they wasted 99% of their free agent budget on an 8th inning guy?”)

Andruw Jones, Francisco Liriano, Fausto Carmona and even Eric Chavez are your seasonal comebacks…

Not bad, huh? I mean you even have to give partial credit because it’s May 2 and Chavez isn’t hurt yet.

Wow does BALTIMORE not have pitching…

Actually they’ve been a little better than that.

…keep the Ortiz thought in the back of your mind. What if the second half of ’09 was the aberration, not the first half? Will the Sox have to bench him? And if so, could the twists and turns of fate find them suddenly grateful that they had been unable to trade Mike Lowell?

We’ve already seen this play out in one direction, it may now be reversing – but long term this will not end happily for Big Papi.

I think Tampa ends up with the best record…This time I like the Rays to win the Series, five years after other owners seriously murmured about moving them or contracting them…


So far so good. Notice I have left out the prediction about Ike Davis not coming up before June 1. Or May 1. I’ll still stop now, I’ve strained something batting myself on the back.

Umpire Fantasy League, You Say?

Up until this season: never in the umpires’ room at a big league game once in my life, and in the last three weeks I’ve now been in there twice. Dale Scott and Dan Iassogna corralled me as I was leaving the field at Yankee Stadium this afternoon and apart from reaffirming my experience that the umps are as cordial a group of guys as exist in the game, Scott told me about something I’d never heard before.

There is at least one Umpire Fantasy League.
MLB Enforcement can relax. It’s not a fantasy league with teams owned by umpires; and there you have your hypothetical winner of the dumbest possible nightmare scandal in sports. It is a fantasy league in which umpires are drafted, and in which they score points for you based on…the number of times they eject players or managers. There are convoluted (ok, impenetrable) scoring variations, but essentially it’s four points every time an ump “correctly” runs a guy, and minus three every time he fails to. There’s a draft, just like in more traditional leagues, and everybody I mentioned this to at The Stadium said the same thing: “Angel Hernandez gets taken first?”
Online sources and my own intuition told me only one man could be behind this: Jud Burch, an ESPN associate producer in my day, later Producer of Baseball Tonight and now apparently a Coordinating Producer for SportsCenter. Only one man I know can do an impression of any one active arbiter’s strike call (many of us can do versions of the long-ago ump Dutch Rennert’s strike bellow, which was a little like the sound I’d expect to hear at the end of the world, only louder), and that’s Burch. And the last time I saw him, he could do all of the time.
Clearly such a league is not for everybody but it really is intriguing to think of the possibility of incorporating it into a standard rotisserie league. Nine pitchers, a catcher, six infielders, five outfielders, a DH/utility spot, and two umpires.
I like it.
I KNOW I KEEP DOING THIS. I KNOW I KEEP SAYING I’LL STOP
All that stands now is an eleven-stanchion-wide section of the right field corner, and some of the ramp structure behind it. Even the debris field is beginning to be cleared up. The lack of the old Yankee Stadium continues to mesmerize hundreds of us at every game. Some views, at various angles, before and after Saturday’s game.
From the elevated station at 161st Street:
IMG_2318.JPG
From the still-in-service 153rd Street parking garage, with the new Stadium in the background, the remainder in the midground, and the ramp structure in the foreground:
IMG_2306.JPG
From the uppermost level of the same parking structure, looking from a point further west:
IMG_2288.jpg
From the new municipal fields just across from the new Stadium, giving a little better sense of the “Bates Hotel” quality to the place:
IMG_2283.JPG
And lastly from a gap in the fencing, under the El, approximately 157th Street:
IMG_2311.jpg

Honey Nut Ichiros?

I absolutely love this: CBS Sports.Com’s list of the 200 most frequently used team names in its 100,000 fantasy baseball leagues. 

Most of these names are absurdly obvious or overly familiar (Gashouse Gorillas, Chico’s Bail Bonds, Boys Of Summer, Naturals, etc.) But many of them provide tremendous insight into the nature of the rotisserian’s mind, and maybe a little bit into what’s popular in baseball and what isn’t:

1 Evil Empire

5 Bronx Bombers

6 Yankees/New York Yankees

7 Bombers

20 Murderer’s Row

42 Highlanders

86 Yankees Suck

131 Damn Yankees

136 Pinstripes

169 Beantown Bombers

I’m beginning to sense a little theme there. Obviously “Evil Empire” probably vaulted to the top with the help of more than a couple of Star Wars/Not Yankees fans, but still, that’s a lot of Yank reverence (honestly, how many “Beantown Bombers” could there be? No hard numbers are offered here – by 169th place three of one team might be sufficient).

But what on earth is that 6th entry. You call your fantasy team The New York Yankees? What part of “fantasy” is unclear to you. Thankfully that’s the extent of the pure rip-offs of extant franchises.
Or not:

2 Springfield Isotopes/Isotopes

9 Red Sox/Boston Red Sox

10 Cubs/Chicago Cubs

13 Mets/New York Mets

16 Tigers/Detroit Tigers

19 Brew Crew

23 Braves/Atlanta Braves

29 Indians/Cleveland Indians

32 Big Red Machine

39 Dodgers/LA Dodgers

49 Cardinals/St. Louis Cardinals

54 Redbirds

60 Phillies

61 Mudhens

75 Reds

76 Brewers

80 Splendid Splinters

81 Red Sox Nation

87 Durham Bulls

92 Amazins

100 Rangers

108 Mariners

115 Tampa Bay Rays

118 Gas House Gang

121 Cubbies

122 Minnesota Twins

123 Louisville Sluggers

129 Kansas City Royals

132 Astros

137 Orioles

140 Expos

162 Dodger Blue

165 San Diego Padres

166 Florida Marlins

172 San Francisco Giants

178 Toronto Blue Jays

180 Rockies

184 Chicago White Sox

185 Senators

188 Homestead Grays

190 Washington Nationals

Your fantasy team is named The Chicago White Sox? I mean I get “Washington Nationals” if you live in the state, or in Washington, PA. If you’re Jay, “Toronto Blue Jays” sounds pretty cool. But where are the Ed Sox, Dead Sox, Fred Sox, Ned Sox, Ted Sox,
and ‘Nuf Ced Sox?

Here is yet another subtle theme:

14 Roid Rage

37 Juiced

57 Balco Bombers

64 Balco

82 HGH

127 Roid Ragers

170 Balco Boys

All right, enough ripping. Five of these I really liked, the first because as cliched as it might be, it represents an epic failure to come up with a fake name in a different context and might thus be described as “meta”:

35 McLovin

43 Kenny Powers

51 Honey Nut Ichiros

128 Little Lebowski Urban Achievers

139 Jeters Never Prosper

I would definitely be proud to call a team of mine “Jeters Never Prosper,” or, especially, “Honey Nut Ichiros,” which is inspired – as long as you’re not in an NL-only league.

For the record I have largely tried to avoid puns for my teams (my teams this year are homages to my Dad: The New York Watoshes and Still Mad They Traded Souchock). But I have operated franchises called New York Annyongkees (I was in a league with a bunch of guys from “Arrested Development”), Somali Pirates, and Keith Myaths (the last one must be said aloud to get the full effect – but may be offensive to, I don’t know, somebody).
Tangentially, if you’ve read this far, a couple of fantasy tips that also seem relevant to the real game. First, it sure looks like the jig is up in Colorado for Clint Barmes, and a line-up spot (in fact a lead-off spot) has been opened for Eric Young, Jr. I’d grab him, and Jaime Garcia of the Cardinals if you have not, to say nothing of the guy who might be the annual “I Wouldn’t Touch Him…They’ll Figure Him Out Soon…I Passed On This Guy 10 Times?” award winner: Carlos Silva of the Cubs.

Another Heir Apparent, Uke, And Papi Pinch-Hit For

The estimable Hank Schulman of The San Francisco Chronicle adds to the previous post about Heirs Apparent that the insider for the Giants’ manager’s job the next time it comes open is former catcher Steve Decker, now managing for them at Fresno. He was, briefly, part of the Giants’ Black and Decker battery, which could be revived in the NL West if he got the San Francisco job while Bud Black is still running San Diego.
Good thoughts for Bob Uecker, who you know is one of the great baseball announcers and baseball people. You may not have had the honor I’ve had, to have worked with Bob during the ’97 World Series, and to stay in touch ever since. They do not make them better than Uke and metaphorically speaking, that they are treating his heart means they will have something big and robust to work with.

Lastly, when Tito Francona pinch-hit Mike Lowell for David Ortiz with the lead run on in the 8th and righty Kevin Gregg coming in at Toronto in the 8th, I thought, gee I like my AL predictions four weeks after I posted them here:

Here is the unasked question in BOSTON: would the Red Sox rather have David Ortiz at DH this year… or Luke Scott? Where, production-wise, will Not-So-Big-Papi fall in 2010? I think he’s behind Guerrero, Kubel, Lind, Matsui, Scott, and maybe others. If the demise of the beast continues, the Red Sox are suddenly presenting a very pedestrian line-up…keep the Ortiz thought in the back of your mind. What if the second half of ’09 was the aberration, not the first half? Will the Sox have to bench him? And if so, could the twists and turns of fate find them suddenly grateful that they had been unable to trade Mike Lowell?…As I have written here before, I am not buying the premise that what in essence was a trade of Melky Cabrera, Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui, for a full-time Brett Gardner plus Curtis Granderson and Nick Johnson was necessarily an upgrade – even if Javier Vazquez (9 career post-season innings; 11 career post-season earned runs) was thrown in, in the bargain… In TAMPA BAY, I’m betting 2009 was the fluke and not 2008. What does one not like about this team? Is rightfield confused? Stick Ben Zobrist there and let Sean Rodriguez have a shot at second. That doesn’t work? Wait for mid-season and the promotion of Desmond Jennings. You don’t like Crawford and Upton? Bartlett and Longoria? Pena? The law firm of Shoppach and Navarro? The Rays seem to summon a fully-grown starter from the minors each year – Price in ’08, Niemann in ’09, Wade Davis in ’10. 

Heir Apparents, Part Two

As promised over the weekend, part two of the “Informed Speculation” about the likeliest successors for each American League managerial post where the incumbent to vanish tomorrow. As I offered in the NL version a few posts down, the breakdown of where the 30 current skippers came from, offers the speculator little hope he’s right:

Managers promoted from own AAA team            0

Managers promoted from coaches                     6

Managers already working in organization           5

Hires directly from other organizations               19

That makes identifying those heir apparents a dicey game. Nevertheless:
BALTIMORE: The Orioles believe Brad Komminsk, managing for them at Bowie, is one of the minors’ top prospects. Fans of the 1983-87 Braves will find this more than a little ironic, since they considered him one of the minors’ top prospects as an outfielder. Interestingly, the other guy in the NL thought to be in Komminsk’s class in the same era? Billy Beane of the Mets, better known as Mr. Moneyball. For outside hires the O’s are said to like Phil Garner.
BOSTON: An interesting question now that Brad Mills has moved on. Before Joe Girardi got the Yankee job, there was a brief whiff of a rumor that Boston pitching coach John Farrell was a candidate there. Between his rapport with the staff and his front office experience, he would seem a likely managerial prospect. Tim Bogar is also highly regarded.
CHICAGO: Joey Cora. Like Oquendo in St. Louis, this is only if somebody else doesn’t get him first.
CLEVELAND: I thought Sandy Alomar (Junior) would be a big league manager back when he was the potent catcher for the Tribe, and I still think so. No change is anywhere near imminent – they like Manny Acta’s style.
DETROIT: Oddly given Jim Leyland’s approaching 25th anniversary of taking over the Bucs, I don’t hear a lot about this. Two men who succeeded him in Pittsburgh, Gene Lamont and Lloyd McClendon, would be obvious choices.
KANSAS CITY: John Gibbons. Hiring a recently dismissed, no-nonsense ex-manager as your bench coach, is the standard process for anointing an heir apparent.
LOS ANGELES: Having already spun off one top manager (Joe Maddon), Mike Scioscia might have another one or two. Ron Roenicke is the bench coach, and Dino Ebel has a ton of minor league managerial experience.
MINNESOTA: Since the Twins hired Gene Mauch in the off-season of 1975-76, only once have they looked outside the organization. In fact, only once have they not looked to their own coaching staff – and even then they hired a coach (Ray Miller from the Orioles, in mid-season 1985). Johnny Goryl, Billy Gardner, Tom Kelly, Ron Gardenhire, and who? This would point us at Scott Ullger.
NEW YORK: Another one not likely to be soon addressed. Third base coach Rob Thomson seems too low-key, bench coach Tony Pena too peripheral. They do think highly of ex-Reds’ skipper Dave Miley, who has produced two firsts in four years managing at AAA. Could there be a Don Mattingly reunion? Only if they ask him – before the Dodgers do.
OAKLAND, SEATTLE: No earthly clue.
TAMPA BAY: Could easily be bench coach Dave Martinez. New hitting coach Derek Shelton was a helluva managing prospect in the Yankees’ system.
TEXAS: See the entry for Kansas City above. Clint Hurdle has “Clint Hurdle will replace Ron Washington for at least the rest of the season, Nolan Ryan said,” written all over him.
TORONTO: Nobody’s said anything formally but it’s Brian Butterfield. He’s been training for this since switching from minor league player to instructor in 1984, but he’s still only 52. Unless the Jays feel some burning need for a name to succeed Cito Gaston, or the desire to bring in a 1993 Toronto great like Alfredo Griffin or Huck Flener, it’s Butterfield. The other prospect in this system, though just a year and a month away from the active roster, is Sal Fasano.

 

Jean Afterman Talks A Little Smack

As Joe Girardi and President Obama held the World Series Trophy, the verbal jousting at the White House between The White-Sox-Fan-In-Chief and an “unidentified” member of the party of New York Yankees has already been wildly misquoted to include words like “hate.” It actually went thusly, according to a careful review of the audio on the videotape:

Yankee: Wanna hold it? You may not get the chance to again!

President: And you wonder why the other teams don’t root for them.

The “unidentified” speaker is Jean Afterman, Vice President and Assistant General Manager, and the executive in charge of the Yanks’ international player procurement.